Floating down the Colorado River and Setting up Camp at night

August 3
I woke up at 4:50 AM and was up. There was no going back to bed. So I started off on a walk, eventually got on a shuttle to go see the sunrise over the Court of the Patriarchs. It was a pretty awesome experience. I have found that most people in the National parks are so happy and very friendly. There are so many awesome places. It’s not a bad thing to experience something like that completely alone.

We then packed up camp at a nice leisurely pace and headed down Mt Caramel-Zion Highway which I must say is so much more enjoyable when it is not incredibly pouring rain on you. There are some great views including a thing called the checkerboard mesa. We were cruising looking to get to our scheduled float trip on time at 12:30 for a 1:00 departure. We showed up at what we thought was 12:25 and there was nobody else there and they informed us we were an hour early. It turns out Arizona doesn’t abide by Daylight Savings time so at the moment they are on West coast time as opposed to Mountain time. We enjoyed our lunch and then took off for a great adventure.

We first took a bus with a hilarious bus driver and when I say hilarious I mean unintentional comedy. He could not stop raving about a scenic view we were going to pass by near Denny’s and was talking about 15 churches located in Page and how they have a golf course and a Chinese restaurant and great store called Wal mart.

We went into a huge tunnel leading up to the Glen canyon Dam and had to put our bags into a white pickup for homeland security purposes. The tunnel was cool because it was built from opposite sides and they met in the middle on an incline and were only an inch and a half off when they met. The float trip was on a pontoon boat with about 20 people. It was overcast which made for a great temperature. The actual Colorado River was 47 degrees after being separated by the dam and wasn't full of rapids but made for an awesome perspective looking up at the Canyon from the bottom. If we had enough time one day it would be just great to do a 8 day trip down the Grand Canyon. This was the only half day or one day trip without incorporating a helicopter ride to get out of the Grand Canyon. Our trip was pretty much through spectacular areas of the Glen Canyon and then part of mile one of the Grand Canyon.
When we left we discovered that the Grand Canyon is in the middle of nowhere. We tried to get to our camp as quickly as possible and along the way in the desert saw a great full double rainbow. But besides that there was barely anywhere to stop. We got to camp at 8:50, sun set around 7:30. So we set up camp in the pitch dark. Pretty impressive and we did it quick enough to still get to the Bright Angel lodge in the grand Canyon village and grab an actual restaurant meal. . And best of all we are here for three nights, which will give us a bit of a break from the constant packing up and go.